10 September 2014

Leading a generation for Jesus

Ten years ago Gavin Calver
was a 24-year-old London Bible College graduate and the youngest ever member of
Youth For Christ's (YFC) leadership team –at the time holding the position of
assistant director of church resources. He was also named in the 'Magnificent
Seven' feature of young leaders to watch in idea May/June 2004 edition. A
decade on and he's national director of Youth For Christ –a position he has held
since April 2009. Richard Woodall caught up with him about being a young leader and discipleship
among younger generations…

"I think we're a bit like British Gas,
we're something the Church might not want but they have to have. At church I am
always asked how we should get more young people. I always say, 'Do you want
more young people, or young-looking old people'? Because I think a lot of places
don't want the change young people bring about."

Gavin Calver seems sure about one
thing: the Church needs to get with the programme. And that programme is making
sure the needs of young people are met;and that when teenagers and 20-somethings
do come through the doors of a church, they don't leave again a few months
later.

What strikes me too about the work of the
Youth For Christ (YFC) movement is not just that the organisation has a
long-term view, but that it offers something distinctively different from
similar parachurch organisations seeking to bring the kingdom of God into the lives
of young people.

"Other youth organisations do far more 'mountaintop
moments'," he says. "There's nothing wrong with that, we do some of them but not
as many. Where I would say YFC is different is that we're on the ground working
with young people every day. At YFC, everything we do has to either demonstrate
the good news and love of Jesus, declare the good news of Jesus, or see
decisions to follow Jesus made, and we want to disciple people too. If it's one
of those four things, and ideally a couple, well that's how we make sure it's
Youth for Christ."

As Calver adds, part of his role upon
joining YFC was to reposition it to work with the Church far more than it
historically had been. Whereas a lot of Christian organisations run events for
young people, YFC see themselves as 'incarnational', working with around
250,000 young people a month - whether that be in schools, prisons, or young
offenders' courtrooms.

Such scope allows for a lot of time
investment;something which is not always easy to see the fruits of
immediately.

"I think we judge whether our work has
been a success at too early an age in young people," said Calver. "People get
very excited about their 14 or 17-year-old going to church;that's great, I don't
want to take away from that, but show me them when they are 25. "In reality, if
you love Jesus when you're 25 years old, you're not likely to walk away. "When
I took over leading YFC, our constitutional age was 11-18 but I changed it to
7-25, because a young person includes someone up to the age of 25. That's the
government measure. "At 25 you're not going to give up the faith because you
don't like the worship, you'll just go to a different church. Whereas at the age
of 17, you might give up. Our vision is that by 2020 we reach a million young
people every month. That would be 15 per cent of Britain's teenagers.

"According to secular research, if you
reach 15 per cent of the demographic, you have the ability to transform the
culture." Part of quadrupling the reach of YFC in the next six years has included
the launch of the RE:quest website. Material is provided to help schools
explore and learn about Christianity in religious education with a raft of
multimedia content.

The strength of Youth for Christ,
supporters say, lies in its ability to be both a pioneer and an innovator. It
will celebrate 70 years as a movement in 2016.

"We're constantly changing the style.
We've launched street dance recently;I couldn't be less into street dance but
it's great for young people. We don't care about the method, because the method
changes like the wind.We never claim to be the best at
anything, but we are brave and we will go first."

Ten years ago, Youth for Christ worked
with Alton Towers to place a feature called The Crux at the theme park's Gothic
Tower chapel;a project which used technology and creativity to help young
people think about their faith. It had four years of use at the Staffordshire theme
park.

Going back further, some 36 years ago,
leaders at Youth for Christ felt Christians weren't coming together enough to
worship God, so a residential was planned. It's now known as Spring Harvest.

Calver says: "One of the things we find
with young people is that when they come to faith it is totally transformative.
There's not much nominal Christianity among teenagers. But then they might go
to church and meet people for whom Jesus is just some kind of random friend -
not everything. I think it's a challenge that if the older church is not on
fire, it puts teenagers off.

"Too many leaders say no
one is feeding me; you've got to feed yourself. I was asked recently by a
leader ten years older than me as to what my biggest frustration with our
generation of Christian leaders was. I said: 'Ten years ago, a load of us
wanted to change the world, but ten years on a lot of my contemporaries are
more interested in the Ikea catalogue than in changing the world'. As you get
older, you have to fight becoming safe."

Gavin Calver is a member of the
Alliance's Council, is on the leadership team for Spring Harvest and runs the
youthwork programme at New Wine. His wife Anne is associate minister at King's
Community Church, Oldbury, West Midlands.

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